Page 74 of Hades and Persephone: Crown of Souls

I keep my head cast down so as not to look too long at the seductive allure of the leaves that whisper shards of a promise never intended tobe.

Thanatos told me not to touch the leaves, lest I be lost to the forest. He warned me against the large elm in the heart of them all, with her weeping limbs a dark seduction of lost promises. He’d claimed her call would be the sweetest of them all. And the repercussions the greatest.

When I’d asked what the point of such a place as the Elm of Lost Dreams was, Thanatos had simply said, “A soul who clings to the dreams of the life lived, is a soul who cannot move forwardwith their life in theafter. The lost dreams will fester and ooze, tainting the soul beyond healing. The point of the Elm is to force the soul to face those dreams as exactly that. Dreams of a past life. It will whisper to them of their particular dream, and it is the soul who must resist. The soul who must not pluck the leaf. Only then will it become a place to shed what was lost, to grieve, and movebeyond.”

I can’t help but wonder what dream it is that Addison is struggling to relinquish now. I can’t help but wonder why the Styx had pushed him into the River Cocytus, also known as the Wailing River, or why he’d been thrust onto the sorrowful shores of the Vale of Mourning.

Why hadn’t his soul been granted passage to Asphodel City, where I felt he belonged after all the pain he’d endured in his earthly existence?After the sacrifice he made for me…

I feel such guilt for the life he lost—and the life I continue to hold even though I can never return to it.

I feel such loss.

A faint mumbling catches my attention, and I lift my head to see a woman I don’t recognize pacing under a limb of an elm whose leaves quiver as though they know she’s close to touching them. To grazing her fingertips over the dreams she’ll never be able to catch.

When she lifts her head, her face is streaked with tears that have dried and fallen and dried again. I wonder how long she has been here, pacing under the whispering leaves. When her hand drifts to her belly, her palm presses into the fabric of her gown as though to hold some part of her in.

I take her in then,really take her in.And I see.

Horror strikes my heart and roots me to the earth beneath my feet. The gown she wears is nothing fancy. In fact, it’s threadbare and simple andold.

It reminds me of something I’ve seen in television shows set in the early eighteen hundreds. Only, she was not the wealthy, but the poor. One who worked her fingers to the bone time and again. One who suffered.

She screams then, jolting me violently from my moment of realization.

Face streaked with tears; she reaches high to pluck one of the whispering leaves.

“No!” I cry out, but I’m not certain she hears me through the call of her lost dreams.

As soon as the leaf is torn from its place on the tree, I hear it all clearly. The prayer for a child. The excitement of a high, lovely laugh in celebration of a new life. Lullabies and dreams whispered to a child in the womb. And lastly the agony that brings the woman to her knees. A birth, excruciating and filled with fear. Only, it’s not a birth. The child never cries…and the woman dies.

My hands cover my cry as the woman falls to the twisted roots of a knotted land beneath her feet. Fingers twist at the leaf, tearing it to shreds that rain down on the gnarled earth and she begins to crawl away from the elm which has taken her most precious dream and crafted it into the pains she suffered in her life.

I start toward her, but I’m caught by something firm and warm. A hand around my wrist. Inside my chest, my aching heart lurches with quick fear that stills when I see the man who the hand belongs to.

Addison.

Adonis.

“She moves back and forth between the Vale of Mourning and The Elm of Lost Dreams. I’ve seen her pull at least six different leaves since I’ve been here. The result is always the same.”

“Oh, Addison.” I can’t help myself as I dive into his arms, holding him tightly. Emotion balloons inside me. Feelings too big, too complex, flood me. “I’m so sorry.”

Slowly, his hands come around me. He is stiff in my arms. “Are you real, Persephone?”

It’s my turn to turn stiff.Am I real?

Pulling back to gaze up into his handsome face, all beautiful and golden and…filled with uncertainty andfear?

“Of course, I am real.” I step from the circle of his arms. “Why would you think I’m not real?”

“I pulled a leaf,” he admits brokenly. “And I saw you. I loved you. And I lost you to him.”

I am struck by the realization of his lost dream. The realization that his dream is me.

For a moment, I can’t think. Can’t speak.

Turns out I don’t have to speak. Addison has more to say. “I remember everything now. All the lives I lived, searching for you. Loving you.” The shake of his head is sad. “You were so deep under my skin, from the very first life I lived.”

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